Madoff admitted to have stopped actual trading in the early
1990s, but investigators argued he may have begun his scam to
some degree since founding his firm in 1960.

What's notable about the case, writer and psychologist Maria
Konnikova told Business Insider, is that Madoff didn't con a
bunch of rubes, hidden from the public eye.

He took hundreds of millions of dollars from banks like the Royal
Bank of Scotland, schools like Stony Brook University, and
individuals like New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon.

Rather than preying on inexperienced investors, Madoff took
advantage of confident ones with years of experience. It taps
into a fundamental truth that Konnikova found when researching
her book "The
Confidence Game," about the psychology of the con.

"I think sometimes people who are more intelligent actually make
even better victims than people who aren't quite as sophisticated
and who aren't quite as educated," she said. Essentially, if
you're absolutely certain you're too clever to fall for a scam,
then you're actually the perfect mark.

This is true for a couple reasons, Konnikova explained.

"If you look at a lot of Bernie Madoff's victims, these were
really sophisticated people who you would think would know
better, but they didn't," she said. "Because they had that
over-confident glow that comes from being intelligent, from being
educated, from being sophisticated, and an accomplished person."

It's the same reason why skeptics often make the best customers
for skilled con artists claiming they have psychic abilities; in
any other situation, the mark thinks, this would be a scam, but
I've come across the real deal.

"The other part of it, which actually really surprised me as I
dug into the psychological research, is that trust is correlated
with intelligence," Konnikova said. "And obviously it's
correlation, so we're not really sure what's going on, but we do
know that that exists." This may be related to the idea that from
an evolutionary standpoint, humans flourish when building
relationships with each other. And so successful individuals will
have achieved their stature in life from having created a network
of those they trust. Great con artists can tap into that.

"Good con artists, you never ever see them coming," Konnikova
said. "And sometimes you don't even realize you've been conned
after they're gone."